The head of Russia's leading computer security company, Kaspersky Lab, has called on of the Russia's most-popular social network Vkontakte to improve its privacy settings.
In an open letter posted on his blog, Yevgeny Kaspersky urged Vkontakte founder Pavel Durov to pay special attention to the security of underage users. Kaspersky's adult son Ivan was kidnapped in April and the businessman said after he was released that the criminals found information about him on Vkontakte.
Durov has many times been strongly criticized for Vkontakte's privacy policy, but the site boasts more than 60 million registered accounts.
In his letter Kaspersky outlined a set of recommendations he said would "help tackle most urgent security and privacy issues in short-term prospect." He proposed that the Vkontakte team beef up security of users' personal data as much as possible, and allow them decide what information they want to make public.
Kaspersky also said that parents should be able to demand that the accounts of their underage children should be deleted.
Vkontakte's press service refused to comment on the letter.
